Four thousand meters above the drowned lowlands of Mega-City 01, rain lashed the heavy quartz glass of the Federal Apex Spire with the persistent rhythm of buckshot. Below the cloud ceiling, the sprawl of nine million souls hummed under defensive shield domes. Their blue-white glowing grids held back the irradiated dampness of the post-Cataclysm Atlantic.
Arthur Vance adjusted the strap of his ARC-7 Mag-Carbine where the magnetic sling crossed his collar bone. Beneath his charcoal field coat, the air-powered needle glove rested cold against his left forearm, its six high-pressure glass ampoules filled with hyper-packed coagulants, neural-stabilizing saline, and broad-spectrum anti-mutagenic broth. On his right thigh, twin heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron stilettos sat locked in spring-sheaths, their grips notched from three years of emergency battlefield tendon cleaning.
He didn’t wear the gold-fringed dress uniform expected of a Federal Vanguard Grand Commander. He wore scuffed combat cordura, heavy knee-splints, and high-traction baked-clay boots that had walked the trenches of the Marianas Deep Rift and the scorched overhead frame decks of the fallen Sky-Spire.
At his left flank, Grimm trotted in complete silence. The hound’s black glass-plated shoulder reached Arthur’s chest bone, six hundred and twenty pounds of compacted bone marrow, dense muscle, and Stygian gravity fields moving with the easy discretion of a cemetery shadow. His lone intact ear twitched toward the high-pressure elevator banks. The scarred stump of his right ear remained flattened against his skull. Every three paces, Grimm’s black leathery nose swept the polished marble floor, filtering sixteen…
